LPT Port Resource Assignment (unable to connect ST7)

[rogerg]

I'm looking for any help ... any help at all! This has been going on a little while now and is frustrating...

My observatory PC died a few weeks back (HDD failure). Since new install (replacement HDD) I haven't been able to connect my Parallel/LPT port ST7. Here's some details.

The PC has two PCI cards in it, each having two COM and one LPT port. Windows lists the cards as being from "MosChip Semiconductor Technology Ltd", on "PCI Multi-IO Controller".

There are 2 LPT and 4 COM ports listed in Device Manager. The COM ports function fine.

The LPT ports have abnormal resource allocations, and I believe this might be where the problem lies, as CCDSoft expects more normal LPT port resources. The resources listed against my COM ports are:

LPT1:
I/O Range 1058 - 105F
I/O Range 1050 - 1057

LPT2:
I/O Range 1030 - 1037
I/O Range 1028 - 102F

CCDSoft only allows for 3 character ranges to be entered, none of which the above fit.

Anyone know anything more about this? how to resolve this? or how to change the resources of the ports in windows?

I have tried looking in BIOS, I've tried in Device Manager - the checkbox/options for "Use automatic settings" in device manager are grayed out, unable to be changed.

CCDSoft and SBIG drivers are up to date.

:help::help:

And just to clarify once again - The ST7 could connect fine on my previous install of windows. In fact when I first got this PC a year or so ago I didn't even consider this kind of problem, it just worked!. Btw, Win7.

Thanks,
Roger.

[sheeny]

Hmmm... I see you've already been on my thread at Software Bisque support, so unfortunately I don't think I can offer anything else.

I assume your camera is USB?

I hope you get it sorted soon.

Al.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi

I haven't been able to test this on this computer because there is no lpt or com port. Someone else may give you more specific instructions.

Did your add on cards have install discs where the address could be specified. If so they may not be changeable from the device manager.

It appears that when you reinstalled your HDD the resources were realocated to ports other than the original. to fix this you will need to open the control panel and select device manager-hardware- resources and select the standard LPT and COM port addresses in
port settings- advanced

LPT1 should be 0378-037F
COM1 should be (COM1) 03F8-03FF
If these ports are allocated to something else you will need to change this first.

I think you have already tried this without success but it is the way I did it. My options were not greyed out

barry

[higginsdj]

You are logged into the PC as adminstrator aren't you?

Have you tried pulling the 2 PCI Cards, reboot, then put the cards back in and see if the port assignements change? In your original install, did you have the PCI cards in place when you did the original install or were the PCI cards added after?

Re the SBIG drivers, I found the latest version of the SBIG Drive Checker did NOT install the parallel drivers by default. I had to check an "LP" flag on the driver install dialogue before it would do this.

Cheers

[rogerg]

Yeap.



No, I will try that, thanks. I will see if there are other free slots to move them to as well. However it is concerning that in BIOS the address ranges for the PCI slots seem to match those assigned to the resources of the ports, and all the PCI slots have high resource ranges in BIOS.



Yeap, noted, I have the latest and have installed the LPT version using the checkbox. At first I had an old version of the updater and that didn't have the checkbox option for LPT.



Originally I had the PC built by the shop with the cards in there. I don't know in what sequence they installed them in the setup process. I am in communication with the shop but hasn't solved the problem yet.

There's no install disks that came with the cards :( And I haven't found anything other than the MosChip drivers on the web (no configuration software).



Yeah, I wish my options were not grayed out.

You have given me one other idea here - seeing if I can find anything that is using the desired range of the LPT1 and see if I can change that to a different range, perhaps meaning the LPT1 card might take up that range automatically.




My camera is LPT, not USB :) I have considered upgrading the camera to LPT but at US$1000 it's a hefty upgrade price (not saying it isn't justified for the work they have to do).

I hope I have it sorted too :) Not sure though, not looking good right now!!

Thank you everyone for your help. I will try moving the cards tonight and rebooting without them etc.

Thanks,
Roger.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Roger

I had a look at my "skymaster" add on board. It has the MOSchip MCS9805CV chip. Unfortunately I can't put it back into the computer at the moment due to lack of a slot. So I can't test it again. However:

I have an installation disk for this chip set that may be useful

Barry

[rogerg]

Interesting.

I would be most interested to know if there's anything more than a driver on there. How old is it? old enough that it wouldn't have software for Win7 anyhow?

I did just find a FAQ on the MosChip website which stated Vista and Windows7 won't allow changing of the resources. This leaves me thinking I need to somehow change it before windows, but seems my only chance at that is physically moving the cards, which I give a low chance of success as I'm quite sure they haven't moved since original installation.

Hmm

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Roger
The Driver disk is a universal disk that has drivers for all sorts of periferal cards. The section for the MOSChip is 108 MB. and contains Windows 7, and Vista drivers with a setup program. It has an .ini file that is used to configure the ports.

If you want to try it I can probably upload it to my web where you can down load it from but the upload/download speed is only 1Mbit/sec.

Barry

[rogerg]

That'd be great Barry, just PM me the link and I'll give it a try tonight at home. Much appreciated.

Thanks,
Roger.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Roger

I just had a better look at the disk and the part that probably is of use to you is only about 10 MB.

PM me with an email address and I can attach it to an email much quicker.

Barry

[sheeny]

OK then... I'm going right back to basics:P... I don't mean to offend if you have already done this:)...

Did you find and check the LPT driver checkbox in the SBIG driver update program? (that was my problem... I assume you found that from my thread at software bisque:P)

Al.

[rogerg]

An update.

Still no luck. I have uninstalled and pulled the cards out, rebooted without them, put one back in at a time, installed different drivers, newest drivers, etc.

Interestingly I have discovered the graphics card (NVIDIA 8400 GS) is using the kind of address ranges I want for the LPT port. But, I cannot find any way of changing those allocations, in BIOS or Win7.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to get my old P4 XP machine running by replacing it's motherboard and power supply, and use that instead. See how I go.

Roger.

[Terry B]

I had the same problem with a similar card I installed for my ST9E. I don't remember the brand but it was a combined parallel port serial port card. I coudn't get the ST9 to be recognised. It worked for a printer only. I gave up and used an old work puter with a native parallel port in the observatory.

[Barrykgerdes]

The cards seem to generally use the MosChip device MSC98xxCV and there are drivers from MosChip. My card is a "Skymaster"

I have the same trouble with Windows 7.

I get a printer port OK and I have the driver for the parallel port but Windows 7 won't allocate a port for it because it is not digitally signed. This could be something to do with the Windows security that inhibits direct access to port addresses

It works OK with XP and Windows 98 on virtual drives

However I do get an installation under another heading in Windows 7 that allocates odd resources similar to what Roger got and the editing facility greyed out.

Barry

[rogerg]

The bizzar thing is that exactly the same configuration, except HDD, worked since I bought the computer about a year ago until the HDD failed.

I wonder what made the resources be allocated differently then vs now (assuming they were different - I didn't have a problem so didn't look!)

:shrug:

[jenchris]

Pity you didn't mirror the HDD before it carked it.
Win 7 - did you have that on the original installation?

[rogerg]

yes, shame there is no image :(

win7 was on the original install.

thanks,
Roger.

[turbo_pascale]

Roger,

Can you take screen shots of each of the driver tabs you see for the card.

I have a laptop that uses an Express Card slot, and had some trouble with my ST7 getting it to fly (it too has issues with not allocating against the legacy addresses), but I got it working.

I got this PDF relating to using a laptop with no legacy parallel port (http://www.sbig.com/pdffiles/NoLegacyParallelPorts.pdf) from SBIG. It may vaguely assist in the debug process.

I would also check using CCDOps FIRST, rather than CCDSoft.

[rogerg]

A very quick note before I go to bed for the night... have had a hectic few days ...

While I hope to follow this up more, it seems I have a (perhaps temporary?) fix!

While shuffling pieces of hardware between old dis-used Pentium 4 machines in an attempte to get my old PC running (which I knew the LPT functioned on) I stumbled upon an un-branded LPT card from a early 2000's PC.

The short of the long is that putting that old LPT card in the new PC has resulted in a functioning LPT 1! Mostly through several strokes of luck.

It's a Sunix card, but I don't know exactly the model. THe number vaguely visible on the card its self didn't exactly match the models on their website, so I picked one of the 6 that were somewhat like it. Installing those drvers, it appars to have "just worked"!!

Interestingly, the resources assined to the PCI Controller device listing for it in Device Manager are high, like the new cards, not normal LPT ranges. Interestingly also, the Port entry its self in the Device Manager does not list any resource (the others have).

Anyway...

Have run out of time to investigate more tonight. I am going to persue the other LPT card more, as it has 2 COM ports on it that I could do with.

More to come on the weekend when I investigate it further hopefully..

Thank you very much everyone for your assistance..

:thanx:

Roger.

[rogerg]

Unfortunately I've found myself in this same situation again after refreshing the PC to Win7 64bit. Unfortunately changing LTP card has ended up with the incorrect resource range again 1018 - 101F.

Any fresh ideas anyone on how to force a PCI card to have a specific input/output resource range?

[rogerg]

I have found a definitive answer to this on the MOSCHIP website:

http://www.asix.com.tw/faq.php?op=faqdetail&PItemID=127

Q0010: Is it possible to remap the I/O addresses of MCS98xx Parallel/Serial ports to Legacy I/O address values?

A0010: In order to be compatible with some legacy software, some users might need to remap the assigned I/O addresses of MCS98xx Parallel/Serial ports to Legacy (ISA type) I/O address (such as 378h, 3F8h, etc.). It is possible on DOS and Windows 95/98/ME operating systems but impossible on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 operating systems because the Remap I/O Address feature is only supported on DOS and Windows 95/98/ME operating systems but is not supported on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 operating systems. As the newer Windows systems maintain a much tighter control over the I/O devices and prevent any Re-Mapping I/O Address operation at device driver level. When the Re-Mapping I/O Address is not permitted, the device must use the I/O Addresses assigned by the PCI system at Boot-Up. If the software application expects the Parallel/Serial ports to use Legacy I/O address resources, it will not be possible to make it work with the Parallel/Serial ports of PCI based devices on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 platforms. On DOS platform, MCS98xx can remap the I/O addresses of the Parallel/Serial ports to desired values by running MCS98xx DOS utility. However, on Windows 95/98/ME platforms, you can only remap the I/O addresses of the Serial ports (but not Parallel port).

So, it seems my ST7-XME is unusable because CCDSoft can't be configured to use the alternate I/O ranges :mad2::mad2::mad2:

[AndrewJ]

Gday Roger
Just for info, when i was looking for a motherboard ( or add on card ) with real LPT and COM ports recently, i went through this, as i have some stuff with dongles etc that need the old legacy LPT addresses.
There are certain motherboards that still have native LPT headers, and i ended up buying one, but i also investigated a limited no of LPT "Cards" that had drivers that allowed their Addresses to be remapped.
There were only a few with this capability, but it may be an option to pursue.

Andrew

[rogerg]

Interesting Andrew.

In my case I'm not really in the market for a new PC, and the Parallel ST7 is only my old backup camera so a new PC with native LPT not really worth it.

However, a card with configurable I/O range, that is very appealing. I've tried hard to find some with that feature in the past and failed. Can you give me any pointers on brand or such?

Thanks,
Roger.

[rogerg]

I have found one:
http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Parallel/1-Port-PCI-Parallel-Adapter-Card-with-Re-mappable-Address~PCI1PM

Curiously it looks exactly the same as one of the cards I have now, just without the dip switches.

I'm going to try installing the software for this card and then failing that (which I expect) will buy the StarTech one.

:thumbsup:

Roger.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Roger
The Startech was one brand i had found.
Just for others benefit, if getting a new PC and you want real COM and or LPT ports without needing add in cards, look for motherboards with "B" series Northbridge chipsets ( Intel only IIRC )
The main types would have B75 or B85 in their designations.
Many of these dont advertise it, but if you look at the specs, you will see a lot do have headers on the boards for real LPT and COM ports.
Andrew
PS just found this one
http://us.axiomtek.com/DownLoad/Spec/imb204.pdf
6 onboard "real" COM ports with 2 already fixed in the back panel + 1 LPT header